A Worthy Man
by tmtcltb
Summary: A conversation with Takehaya after Peng's death changes the course of Mike Slattery's life. This is AU starting mid-season 3.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N – this story came to me following a conversation with StarTraveler. Thank you for the inspiration my dear!_

A Worthy Man

"You wanted to see me?" Mike asked as he stepped into the chamber assigned to Takehaya and Kyoko, not quite closing the door behind him. Despite all that gone on the night before, when Takehaya took down Peng at the Japanese National Archive, Mike couldn't help but view the other man with suspicion. A mutual enemy might make them allies, but it didn't make them friends. As the silence stretched, Mike prompted again. "Takehaya?"

"Kaito, my name is Kaito," the man reminded him, drawing himself up weakly until he stood stiffly before Mike, a shadow of the man he must once have been.

"Kaito." Mike let the name roll over his tongue. "Still trying to get used to that one."

The man before him smiled slightly, as though amused by Mike's honesty. "I requested your presence to ask a favor of you. It is clear that I am dying, as is my wife."

Mike didn't respond. Following Peng's defeat, Tom had managed to talk Takehaya – Mike refused to think of him as Kaito, whoever that man was, he had died long ago – into returning to the Nathan James for medical treatment and another blood transfusion, but there was no hiding the truth. Rios was nowhere near developing a cure for the green mist, and Takehaya and Kyoko were already on borrowed time.

"I request that you adopt my son, Kaito."

" _Excuse me?"_

Of all of the possible reasons Mike had considered for this summons on his way from the bridge, none of them had involved Takehaya's infant son.

But Takehaya appeared unfazed by Mike's reaction. "My men have offered to take Kaito and raise him here in my homeland, but they, like me, are now pirates and many of them are sick. Even if a cure for the green mist is found, they will remain outcasts. I do not want my son raised to be a criminal. I want a better life for him."

Mike struggled to collect himself, understanding the rationale behind Takehaya's request, even as the request itself shocked him to the core. The man's options were limited, after all. "I am honored by your request, Kaito, but my circumstances would make raising a child difficult. I would suggest that you speak with Lieutenant Green. He and his wife have a young son and the boys could be raised together."

But rather than accept Mike's polite refusal, Takehaya pressed on. "You lost your family to the Red Flu, did you not, Captain Slattery?"

A familiar agony swept Mike's chest as he considered his dead son and missing daughters. "I lost my son but I still have hope of finding my wife and daughters," Mike finally responded around the lump in his throat.

Takehaya nodded, accepting Mike's words at face value, although both men knew the score. In this new world, missing rarely meant lost. It meant dead. "I hope you find them before many more days pass."

 _396 days._

That's how long it had been since Mike kissed his wife and children goodbye and boarded the Nathan James for what was supposed to be a four month cruise to the Arctic, never imagining that it might be the last time that he would see them.

 _How many more before he knew for sure?_

How long before he confirmed what his head knew but his heart refused to accept? How long before he found proof that they, like Lucas, were dead? The girls, well, he still held out some hope but with Christine, the facts were staring him in the face. After close to twenty years of marriage, he knew that woman inside and out, and there was no other explanation for her failure to come to St. Louis. If she were alive, she would have found a way – somehow.

Mike forced his attention back to the present as Takehaya continued speaking.

"You are an honorable man, Captain Slattery. During our time together, I have come to respect you greatly, and I know that you would not hold the actions of his parents against Kaito. You would raise him to understand his past, and the mistakes of his father. You would teach him to be a worthy man."

 _A worthy man._

Hadn't that been his goal with Lucas? To raise his son to be a good person, a man who could stand on his own two feet? It had been easier with the girls; they had both been sharp, quickly adjusting to the various moves and new schools and new friends, not struggling the way Lucas did, causing Mike and Christine to spend endless hours figuring out how to help their son.

 _Much the same way Takehaya and Kyoko must have spent the majority of their precious remaining hours discussing the best path for Kaito._

"Why me?"

The words were no more than a whisper, drawing another enigmatic smile from Takehaya. "Who better to raise a boy who lost his father than a man who lost his son?"

A knock sounded behind Mike, the guard alerting him to Kyoko's approach. Despite himself Mike found his eyes drawn to the infant cradled so contently in his mother's wobbly arms, so oblivious to the great tragedy he was about to experience. A glance at Kyoko's face reminded Mike of how little time she and Takehaya had left with their son, the child that they had fought so hard to bring into this world – the child that they were now were leaving.

And in that instant Mike knew what he had to do.

The details could be figured out later. Hell, that's what parenting was like anyway – jumping in headfirst and praying that you didn't screw it up. But he wouldn't force Takehaya or Kyoko to live their final hours in the same agony that Mike had experienced since that heart-breaking trip to Norfolk two hundred and thirty-six days ago, the anguish of wondering where your children were, whether they were being cared for, whether they were being fed, whether they were happy.

 _It was a hell that Mike wouldn't wish on his greatest enemy._

Moving further into the small cabin, Mike took a deep breath. "It's been a while since I held a baby. I might need a few refreshers."


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N – because this is my fiction and it's AU anyway, Tex and Cruz are still alive. I also call Cruz "Teylor Cruz" here because that's the name I use throughout my stories and I can't think of Cruz as "Javier"._

 _x_

 _x_

Mike stood outside the small cabin, pretending that his eyes weren't wet as he watched Kyoko rock her son, soothing him to sleep with a lullaby. Not that Mike understood a word that she was saying, of course, but some things were universal.

 _And Kyoko sounded just like Christine used to sound when she sang the kids to sleep._

Andrea set a hand on Mike's arm. "You holding up?"

"It's just..." Mike trailed off.

"Awful," Andrea finished. "Watching a mother say goodbye."

"I keep thinking about Christine and what it was like, at the end, with Lucas." Mike thought back to the brief conversation he had with his wife when he finally got through to Christine from the Arctic. The reception was terrible, of course, made worse by Christine's sobbing as she told him that Lucas – _her baby, their baby_ – was dead. He had been infected while on a scouting trip, a trip that Mike was supposed to go on before the surprise cruise to the Arctic forced him to bow out, a family friend stepping in to take his place. Apparently one of the campers was infected and the virus spread like wildfire in the close confines of the camp. By the end of the weekend, three quarters of the participants were infected.

Lucas never stood a chance.

Guiltily, Mike remembered how tense things were with Christine before he left. She was furious when he turned down the Florida desk job, knowing that a desk job would mean no further career advancement, claiming that he was putting his career before his family. That Lucas needed him, that the girls needed him, that _she_ needed him home more. They fought incessantly those last few days in Norfolk, Mike even going so far as to mention the big D. It was a low he had never sunk to before, suggesting that maybe they would be better off apart after nineteen years of marriage and five years of dating before that. The look on Christine's face, the shock, the devastation, the hurt, transforming almost immediately into a brittle shell as she told him that was a decision he would have to make himself, still haunted him.

Mike had tried to make up for it, of course, once he calmed down and realized how idiotic he had been - God knows he would never find anyone else to put up with his crap the way Christine did. He called Christine several times before the ship went to EMCON, even going so far as to send her flowers, something he hadn't done in years and had resulted in a suspicious email from Whitney asking what he had done to piss Christine off. But his words – some of the last that he spoke to his wife – still gnawed at him.

He had let his family down not once, but twice. First by not being there when Lucas got sick, and second by not getting back in time to help Christine and Whitney and Shaylyn.

Mike glanced at Andrea. "I'm glad that Christine was there with Lucas, even if she was holding his hand through a pair of rubber gloves."

Andrea was staring at Kyoko and Kaito as though mesmerized. "The hospital records showed that Lily went first. It makes it better, knowing that she wasn't alone at the end."

Mike knew that Andrea felt the same guilt that he did. Guilt for not being there when their children needed them; for not protecting them, for not getting back in time to save them, for not being there to hold their hands as they lay dying. It was a guilt that Mike knew he would carry to his grave and he suspected that Andrea would as well.

"Christine said the hospital had Lucas drugged up pretty well by the end. Probably the same thing with Lily," Mike noted. It was a strange conversation to have, but one that was only too common in this new reality. Not whether you had lost anyone, but who you had lost and how they had gone.

The creak of the door announced Takehaya's – Kaito's – entrance, stooped, breathing heavily, walking only with the assistance of one of his men. Kyoko's head rose, her eyes meeting her husband's, an unspoken communication passing between the two. Standing, she moved soundless through the small room until she stood before Mike. She hesitated for only a second before passing Mike her son, the tiny infant barely stirring, completely unaware of the significance of this moment.

That it was the last time he would see his parents.

Kyoko took another moment to stroke her son's tiny head, the tears streaming down her face, before she bent down to press a final kiss to his forehead. Then she turned, slipping her arm around her husband, holding him as he said his own goodbyes to his son in words too soft for Mike to hear even if he understood Japanese.

Straightening, Takehaya held out a small scroll. Mike carefully balanced Kaito in one arm, reaching out to take the paper. "What is this?"

"A letter for Kaito, when he is ready, about his family and his country. He comes from a line of proud warriors. I do not want him, or the world, to forget them," the man explained, his voice choked. He bowed his head. "Thank you."

Mike bowed his head in response. "I am honored."

A minute later they were both gone, and Mike was left standing in the small space with Andrea and the baby.

"About time for my shift but holler if you need anything," Andrea said, then smirked. _"Dad."_

It hit Mike like a thunderbolt. The realization that, for the fourth time in his life, Mike was responsible for another human being. That Kaito was now completely dependent on Mike for his health, his education, his well-being – for his very life.

Mike had let down Whitney and Shaylyn and Lucas. He would not make those same mistakes with Kaito.

Mike headed down the pathway with his small bundle. After agreeing to Takehaya's request Mike made a few changes to his cabin, having a basket suitable for a cradle installed next to the bed, and asking Rios to locate a supply of formula and diapers. Lucky for Mike, Michener had prioritized the refitting of an old beer factory near St. Louis to produce formula and a supply was included in the humanitarian aid sent to Japan along with the cure, most of which never left the dock. Diapers were harder to source but Garnett came up with the ingenious idea of making reusable ones out of cotton batting and waterproof canvas. So far they seemed to be working and, since Mike wasn't doing the one doing the laundry, he had no complaints about the messier aspect of the process.

Still, changing his first diaper in seven years was a rather monumental moment. From the moment Whitney was born fifteen years ago, Mike had embraced parenthood, and he planned to do the same for Kaito. Not because of his promise to Takehaya, but because Kaito deserved to have a devoted parent. Every child did, pandemic or not, and Kaito was already in the poor position of being stuck with only one person to raise him. Mike didn't plan to slack on the job.

Mike had almost reached his cabin, when he ran into Lieutenant Danny Green, the younger man's expression one that Mike knew all too well. "Any word from Kara?"

Although the Nathan James was running silently, they were still receiving – assuming there was anything to receive.

"Nothing since Dennis said they were headed to Texarkansas," Danny replied, his stiff posture betraying his worry.

"The only reason to go to Arkansas would be to find Tex," Mike reassured the younger man. "And if anyone can keep Kara and Frankie safe, it's Tex."

Danny swallowed visibly, Mike's reassurance obviously less than reassuring. This is the part of the job that Mike always sucked at. He could strategize with the best and knew this ship inside and out, but when it came to dealing with anything personal, well, Mike wasn't known for his sensitivity. That was Tom's job.

Green's eyes flickered to Kaito, his face relaxing slightly. "Kyoko decided to go with the pirates then?"

"Our vampirate population has returned to zero," Mike confirmed. "Just the squirt left."

That actually got a chuckle. "I'm glad you agreed to keep him with us. I wasn't the only one worried about leaving him here with a bunch of degenerates, about half of whom are at death's door anyway. What will you do with Kaito once we hit the States?"

"CNO plans to send a rhib ashore with Rios and his team before we make contact, just in case. If everything goes to hell Rios can get the information on the green mist to Milowsky." That was the hope, anyway. Last Mike knew, Milowsky was still in South America where he had traveled with President Oliver – back when he was Vice President Oliver – on his goodwill tour. Unfortunately, Milowsky remained behind to continue their work when Howard returned to St. Louis, which would make getting in touch with him difficult. And that assumed the official word was the truth. For all Mike knew, Milowsky was dead, killed by the same conspirators behind the sinking of the Hayward and the Shackleton. But until they knew for sure that he was dead, Milowsky was still their best shot at finding someone to back-engineer the green mist and hopefully figure out a way to counteract it.

As if he were reading Mike's mind, Danny noted, "Cruz and Martínez both speak Spanish. In case Rios needs to go south. It would be easier for them to lay low."

"Exactly what I was thinking," Mike replied with a grin. "We'll brief them in the next couple of days. I imagine Cruz will be upset to be out of the action."

"I think that graze to his neck was enough to give him pause," Danny replied. Mike had to agree. It was a close call – too close. They had lost too many people to Peng and his manipulation. "Teylor wants to see his nephews grow up."

Mike found himself looking down at Kaito. "Kids certainly have a way of making you re-evaluate your life."

"That they do." Danny gave a slight snort, and Mike suspected that the man was recalling his conversation with Tom on the deck of the Nathan James the afternoon when they found out that Kara was pregnant – and probably dying. There was no doubt that Green did a hell of a lot of growing up that day. The man who exited that hazmat tent, having barely moved from Kara's side for more than twenty-four hours, was not the same man who entered it.

Conversation done, Danny moved past Mike, heading towards his bunk. At the last minute, Green changed directions, going towards the gym, probably planning to work out until he collapsed from exhaustion.

It was a strategy that Mike never found particularly effective.

"Danny."

Green turned, an eyebrow arching. "Captain?"

"Knowing that your family is out there, in danger, and you can't help them? Well, it's a special kind of hell. But last you heard, Kara and Frankie were alive. Cling to that. It's what will let you keep going."

And, first once, Mike knew that he had found the right words.


	3. Chapter 3

"Captain?"

Mike turned at the sound of Alisha Granderson's voice. "Yes, Lieutenant?"

"We just made contact with vulture team. They are headed to the rendezvous site as we speak."

"Is everyone ... okay?"

Mike wasn't sure why he hesitated. Alisha didn't appear upset, like she would if something had gone wrong. Maybe it was the way Kara clung to Danny in San Diego, her eyes still puffy from the tears she shed upon seeing the Henan go up in flames. Maybe it was the look on Tom's face when Allison Shaw revealed her final, despicable act. Maybe it was the memory of Christine's voice when he reached her from the Arctic. But part of Mike refused to believe that he was getting out of this one unscathed.

Granderson's face softened. "No injuries reported, sir. They'll be here within the hour."

Nodding, Mike turned back to the scene before him. The room was in shambles, of course, with the elder Burk attempting to get the computers up and running while Tex was being treated for a bullet wound and Miller and Diaz swept up shards of glass. But Mike's gaze was drawn again and again to the corner of the room where Danny Green stood holding his son, both he and Kara in tears as they exclaimed over the boy. It was a scene reminiscent of any delivery room.

And one that hit too close to home for Mike.

The look on Kara's face – that was how Christine looked when Whitney was born, as she cradled their firstborn against her chest and then turned her for Mike to see the little bit of perfection that they had created. The look on Danny's face – that was how Mike felt when he disembarked from the Ronald Reagan to find Christine standing on the dock, waiting to introduce him to six weeks old Shaylyn. The swell of emotion that meeting your child for the first time brought, no matter when that happened. The love. The wonder. The pride. The terror. Each time felt just like the first.

Thoughts of meeting his girls gave way to other memories. Building forts in the living room. Riding bikes in the yard. The two of them covering his head with barrettes while he slept (and Christine taking a picture). Birthday cakes and American Girl dolls and sleepovers with fifteen girls playing karaoke until 0300.

And then the Whitney hit high school and Shaylyn hit middle school and suddenly their only topics of interest were designer clothes and dance competitions and who-was-stealing-whose-boyfriend, all the while giving Mike and Christine attitude over homework and school and whether they should have their own cell phones.

Mike found himself smiling at the memories. Funny how even those moments – when he was so frustrated that he longed to be back at sea – now felt so bittersweet. Because even when he was ready to tear out the little hair that he had left, Mike could see the future. Each time Whitney railed at Mike for being part of an institution that used whale killing sonar, Mike imagined her channeling that passion into a career in law. Each time Shaylyn drew a picture of him as the devil, complete with horns and a tail, Mike saw a future graphic artist. Actually, Lucas was the one he worried about the most, with his struggles in school and his lack of a social life, fearing that he would never find his place in this world.

As his own mother used to say, there was no point raising children without any spunk.

Thoughts of his girls made Mike's chest ache, the burden of not knowing worse in many ways than the certainty of Lucas's death. At first, knowing that Christine and the girls were alive was what kept him going. But as the days stretched with no news, as he searched first Norfolk and then Chicago and found no sign of them, as more and more people trickled into St. Louis once word of the cure spread, hope slowly faded until all that remained was a hole in his heart the size of Antarctica.

Not that Mike had given up – could give up – but the search for his family was now secondary to the infant who was depending on him. And though his introduction to Kaito had been very different than his other children, Mike's feelings were no less engaged, his determination to keep Kaito safe actually more pronounced by what happened the first time around.

He wouldn't lose his second chance to have a family.

"Captain! You have to see this!" Nishioka's voice was almost frantic, and he was waving what looked like a flash drive as he dashed into the room. Immediately the room came alert.

"What's the problem Lieutenant?" Mike kept his voice calm.

"We were searching Shaw's office and we found _this_." Nishioka attempted, unsuccessfully, to activate one of the laptops. "It wasn't even encoded."

"And what is _this_?" Mike demanded, somewhat impatiently. Carl was easily excited and Mike usually depended on Foster or Burk to calm him down.

"You have to see for yourself," Nishioka answered, again fumbling in his attempt to enter the password.

"Let me." Kara passed Frankie to Danny before reaching over, hitting the correct combination of keys and sliding the thumb drive into the computer. The screen came to life immediately, and Mike almost cursed Kara's efficiency as he stared as an image of his wife and daughters appeared on the screen.

Andrea – never shaken by even the craziest of events – was the first to react. "Is that…."

" _You know what my name is," Christine snarled at someone off camera, her arms wrapped defensively around her daughters._

Despite his shock, Mike almost smiled at her ferocity. Christine's face might be smeared with dirt, her hair straggling around her shoulders, but the look on her face was pure defiance. Whitney was copying her mother's attitude, glaring at the camera, while Shaylyn huddled into Christine's side, the ten, no eleven-year-old, still a child in so many ways.

" _Humor me."_

"Shaw!" Kara's gasp was a more civil version of Mike's reaction. Every eye in the room was now glued on the computer screen.

" _My name is Christine Marie Slattery. And that is all that you are getting from me," Christine snapped back._

 _Allison entered the frame, perfectly put together, wearing one of her trademark skirt suits with blue suede pumps, her attire clashing horribly with the plaid, seventies-style couch where Christine, Whitney and Shaylyn sat. "That's not very cooperative Mrs. Slattery. Do you really want me to take my frustration out on your children?"_

Mike couldn't stop the growl that rose at Shaw's threat, even knowing that Shaw was now dead and beyond his ability to hurt.

" _What do you want?" Christine snapped._

" _Please state the date."_

" _March 30, 2015," Christine answered._

Someone gasped.

"Can you confirm that?" Mike demanded, looking at Kara.

"I'll see what I can do," Kara replied, her fingers already running over the keyboard. "That correlates with the date the file was created, sir. It's possible to fake, though. Let me check Allison's schedule."

The seconds ticked by like days. "Shaw was supposed to be in NYC with Croft that week."

"Croft." Mike's mind swirled. "Christine and the girls were last seen in Maryland and that was Croft's territory."

"If she wasn't in St. Louis, she could have been anywhere," Cameron pointed out.

" _And how long have you been here?" Shaw continued._

" _Since that asshole Williams tricked us into trusting him." This time it was Whitney who spat out the answer, her chin jutting out at Shaw defiantly._

For the first time, Mike really looked at his daughter, noticing how much older she looked from a year ago. Fifteen. His baby girl was fifteen now – assuming she was still alive. But she was four months ago. And that was more than he knew earlier today.

" _Mrs. Slattery? Please tell the camera what happened after you left Deer Park."_

" _The safe zone was infected so we left, holed up at a summer camp the girls went to when they were younger._ "

Mike gasped, cursing his own stupidity. He'd been so close to them. Why hadn't he thought to look at the camp? He had endured months of uncertainty and pain that didn't need to have happened.

" _We got to Baltimore in December but there was no more cure," Christine stated as though she was reading from a script. "The laboratory had been bombed but people said the Nathan James would come back so we decided to wait. Then in January the contagious cure arrived with word of what happened in St. Louis. Todd Williams was the man in charge of cure distribution. I asked him to get word to Mike that we were alive. A few days later he found me again and said Mike wanted us to go to St. Louis. But instead you brought us here. Wherever here is."_

Mike felt sick. While he was sailing south to Norfolk and then west to St. Louis, Christine and the girls were headed north to Baltimore, like ships passing in the night.

" _The mountains," Whitney interjected. "We're in the App…."_

" _Shut up!" Shaw snapped. Visibly calming herself she turned her back on Christine, moving until she was off-camera. "Thank you, that's all I need."_

" _Where are you going?" Christine demanded. "What do you want from us?"_

Although her face barely changed, Mike could hear, could see, Christine's panic. It was in her voice, in the lines around her eyes, in the way her arms tightened around the girls. Despite her brave face, she was worried.

" _From you?" Shaw asked, her voice amused. "Nothing. You are simply my insurance policy in case your husband decides to deviate from orders."_

 _Comprehension lit Christine's face and she looked straight at the camera. "Don't do it Mike! Whatever they want don't do – "_

As the video cut to black, the silence in the room was absolute as everyone took in the implication of what Shaw was saying, understood her plan.

 _Step 1, get rid of CNO Captain Thomas Chandler._

 _Step 2, blackmail his assumed replacement by holding his family hostage._

The only remaining question was whether Shaw carried out her threat once the plan went awry.

"I want to see Croft." Mike said. "Now."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"I'm telling you, I didn't know anything about it." Croft shrugged, still half-sloshed from his bender the evening before. Something told Mike that the guy was rarely sober. "Shaw and Price were the ones who figured all of that shit out. The only reason they didn't kill me when they took out Beatty was because they couldn't control the factions in the Northeast without my particular … skill set."

If Mike hadn't already known that the man was a mobster, he would now. Unfortunately, however, he believed the man. Roberta Price was a sharp woman, and Allison Shaw wasn't someone to put her cards on the table. It made perfect sense that they would keep Croft in the dark as much as possible, seeing him as a necessary evil at the moment, but planning to eliminate him at the earliest opportunity.

"They were at a safe zone in Maryland. That's your region. How would Shaw have kidnapped three people in your territory without you knowing?" Mike pressed.

"I only picked up Maryland after Granderson died. It took a while to wrestle control from Thorwald's people." Croft said, taking a gulp of his coffee. "Thank your Captain Chandler for that, by the way. The woman was a thorn in my side."

"How would Shaw have done it?" Mike asked, struggling to keep his voice calm.

Croft shrugged. "Easy enough. Once the cure began spreading, people started registering as survivors. It was Michener's idea, remember? A way to help people locate family?"

"I remember," Mike growled, his impatience drawing a smirk from Croft. The man was _enjoying_ this, damn it.

"Well, they probably registered. Shaw handled the lists as they were compiled. It would have been easy enough for a few names to disappear from the official register," Croft noted. But the crafty look on the man's face told Mike that he wasn't speculating.

Mike's family was not the only one to disappear.

"Who else?"

"You have a pen?"

Thirty minutes and almost fifty names later, Mike left the interrogation room feeling sick. They had barely touched upon the depths of Shaw's depravity. Political enemies, people of strategic importance, leaders who emerged during the Red Flu who might have challenged the power of the Regional Leaders, all had been eliminated or blackmailed into compliance.

Wolf spoke the second that Mike turned the corner into the hallway. "Croft give you anything, Captain?"

"He thought Shaw mentioned a cabin in the Poconos once," Mike said. "Near the Pennsylvania-New York border. He remembered it because it seemed an odd thing for her to raise, given that she was a born and breed Midwesterner. That squares with what Whitney started to say about being in the Appalachians."

"That's a pretty big area to search," Danny commented. "You believe him?"

Mike nodded. "The man's a drunk and a liar, but this has Shaw's fingerprints all over it." He stopped, looking around the room. Russ, Danny, Carlton, Tex, Wolf, Rick, Teylor, Ray – even Cameron had hung around to hear the news. "I'm planning to leave as soon as I clear it with Tom."

Tex snorted. "Do you really think we would let you go alone? You'd probably do something stupid like getting yourself killed."

"We're with you sir," Carlton said, drawing a round of nods.

"Doc Rios said I'm good to go," Rick noted.

"Kara already volunteered to watch Kaito," Danny added.

"Maybe _she_ knows how to change a diaper without smearing baby shit across the entire ship," Carlton muttered, drawing chuckles from the assembled group.

"Hey, those suckers are wigglier than they look," Danny defended himself.

Mike raised an eyebrow. "I've changed four babies and never before have I had to clean poop off the ceiling." He paused until the laughter died down, meeting each man's eyes, knowing how hard the last few months had been on each one of them, knowing that every one of them was fried, and yet none of them turned away. "This mission may be a wild goose chase. I'm not asking any of you to come with me."

It was Jeter who responded. "The only way you are getting away from us is to give us a direct order to stay, sir."


	4. Chapter 4

"Did Halsey get stuck to your face, Green?" Tex drawled. "That thing looks alive."

"As if you can talk, Duck Dynasty," was the immediate retort.

"Thank you for the compliment," Tex shot back.

Mike took a minute to consider both men. Two weeks in the woods certainly hadn't done much for any of their personal hygiene, but Danny's beard was particularly scruffy. "You both look like shit."

Tex gave a drawn-out sigh. "Seriously, the lack of appreciation..."

"Can it, Tex," Danny retorted.

"We have something." Wolf's voice crackled over the radio, interrupting the banter.

"Roger that. All teams return to base," Mike responded, following the protocol that they had established the first day in the woods, realizing that by splitting up into three smaller groups that they could cover far more territory.

It wasn't their first contact. In fact, over the past two weeks they had run into a surprising number of hardy survivors holed up in this remote area of the Appalachians, too cut off from civilization to have heard about the cure. Some had graciously accepted Mike's offer to vaccinate them against the Red Flu while others declined, suspicious of strangers bearing gifts sounding too good to be true. Mike could only hope that they would be unintentionally exposed to the contagious cure through contact with those who had accepted the vaccination (he was well past caring about informed consent, that was not his department), or would eventually check out civilization and discover that the cure was, in fact, real. Most were friendly enough once Mike explained their mission (the lack of uniforms certainly helped), although one man had chased them off with a shotgun for flirting with his daughter after the girl slipped Cameron a note begging for the vaccine that her father had refused.

Mike slipped back the next day to leave several doses of the cure and one of their precious dispensers with directions how to inject it, watching to make sure that the right person found the package, hoping that she would find a way to vaccinate herself and younger siblings without incurring her father's wrath.

But no matter how many people they found, nobody seemed to know anything about Allison Shaw, Roberta Price, Randall Croft, or Christine Slattery. Their best lead to date – tenuous as it might be – came from a group of campers they ran into two days ago, who recalled seeing a helicopter headed in this direction a couple of months ago.

Upon reaching the chosen rendezvous site, Mike took a moment to consider the nine men who stood before him, wondering how much longer he could justify keeping them out here traipsing through the Pennsylvania wilderness when every set of hands was needed back in St. Louis to undo the damage caused by Shaw and the Regional Leaders. Not that the choice was entirely in Mike's hands. President Oliver might have personally approved this mission, officially one to locate Shaw's kidnap victims (which just happen to include Mike's family), but Tom's increased evasiveness during their daily check-ins told Mike that Oliver was putting pressure on his CNO to deliver results, or scrap the attempt.

Still, even if Oliver was willing to let the search continue indefinitely, Mike wasn't. While the guys weren't complaining, it didn't take a shrink to see how burned out they all were, how much they all wanted – no, needed – to go home. To see their families. To sleep in their own beds. To have time to recover, mentally and physically, from all that had happened over the past year. Cruz and Miller were still healing from the injuries they acquired on Takehaya's island. Diaz was waking up at least once a night with nightmares about vampirates. Green had a four month old he had seem for a total of twelve hours. Tex was a single dad. The Burk brothers had yet to make it to Chicago to bury their parents. Taylor was still grieving Val's loss. And Russ, well, Russ had been through more than any man should long before the Nathan James left for the Arctic.

Each of the men before him was postponing his own life to be here, with Mike, on the slim chance that Shaw didn't simply record the video, and then turn around and slit Christine's throat – something that none of them would put past her. After all, the woman was sleeping with Michener at the same time she was planning his murder.

Mike glanced up at the sky, taking in the late afternoon light. There was time to check out this one last lead, and then he would call it. Ask Tom to pick an extraction point. Take his boys home. Go collect Kaito. Accept that his family was gone.

 _And start living his life again._

"Report, Commander Burk."

"We found a camp about two clicks north-northwest," Cameron explained.

"It's more fortified that anything we've seen before," Carlton added.

"Three buildings. Definitely people inside. At least two guards and a solid wooden fence enclosing everything," Wolf concluded.

Danny studied the rough map that Miller produced. "There's room in that clearing to land a helicopter. This could be our spot."

"Same routine as before, sir?" Russ inquired, his professional demeanor fully intact despite the fact that none of them had bathed in over a week.

Mike nodded. "So far we're batting 100%. Let's go with what works."

Tex rustled around in his pack. "Just need two minutes to change."

Like they had more than a dozen times before, the men spread out, surrounding the compound, getting a fix on the front door just in case everything went south. At Mike's signal, Tex headed towards the gate in the fence, Halsey at his side, whistling a cheerful tune.

"Hello? Anyone there?"

"Get away from here!" The response from inside the compound was immediate. From his position, Mike could see two men exiting the largest building, moving towards the gate where Tex waited.

"I'm not infected. I got the cure months ago. Just looking to trade for supplies," Tex responded.

"We're not interested," called the same, terse voice.

But Tex hadn't talked his way into fifteen other camps by giving up easily. "You know anyone around here who might be willing to trade? Got some doses of the cure that I could be convinced to part with for a pair of new boots."

He emphasized his point by holding up a foot, his red-sock clad toe clearly visible through a hole in the side of the boot that Tex put there for just this purpose.

"Captain, you better get over here. I have a girl in the back window who might be your older daughter," Carlton reported over the radio.

Mike stopped listening to Tex as he made his way to the rear of the compound where Carlton was waiting, heart pounding, eyes trained on the rear building. Falling to his chest, unable to say a word, he took the binoculars that Carlton held out, every fiber of his being praying that this was it.

 _That he was finally getting his proof of life._

For a minute nothing happened, and Mike thought he'd missed his chance. Then a figure appeared in the window – a girl, her long brown hair swinging around her face as she peered out, as though to try to catch a glimpse of the man with a Texas twang who was trying to talk his way inside – and there wasn't a single doubt in Mike's mind who she was.

 _Whitney_.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"What's the plan, sir?" Russ asked once they were back at camp, Ray and Rick staying behind to keep an eye on the compound.

"They'll probably be on high alert for the rest of the day," Cameron commented. "Might make sense to wait a day or two. Gives us time to do some surveillance too. See if there is a way to get in without a frontal assault."

"I'm not leaving my family there for a second longer than I need to," Mike practically growled the words, despite knowing that Cameron's plan was perfectly logical.

"How about first light?" Danny suggested in an obvious attempt to smooth over the tension. "They'll assume Tex is long gone at that point and the hostages should all be in one place, making it easier to get in and get out with minimal loss of life."

 _Minimal loss of life. Was it possible that he would get this close, only to lose them?_

Mike shoved the thought away, recalling his words to Danny only weeks ago. Whitney was alive, and last he knew Christine and Shay were too. He would cling to that.

He had to.

Wolf nodded. "I agree with Green. First light gives us time to figure out how many hostiles we are looking at and to get an idea of their routine, but not enough time for them to move anyone or call in reinforcements."

"Unless they bring people in by helicopter," Carlton pointed out.

"Taylor and I can keep an eye on the clearing just in case," Teylor mentioned, eyes swinging to Mike. "Take them out when they land, if necessary."

"Go." Mike nodded, turning back to the remainder of the group. "As for the rest of us, we've got twelve hours to make a plan."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mike spent the night watching the compound, knowing that he wouldn't be able to sleep anyway and wanting the guys get as much rest as possible. Tex and Russ joined him for the first part of the evening, replaced by Danny and Halsey around midnight.

"How you holding up, sir?" Danny asked as he settled in next to Mike, binoculars trained on the darkened buildings before him where absolutely nothing was happening. From what Mike could see, there wasn't even an exterior guard. But he wasn't foolish enough to think that this would be easy. He had to assume that there were protections in place to keep the hostages from escaping, and the last thing he wanted was do was accidentally trip a wire and have them all go up in a giant fireball.

"Remember how you felt seeing that armament facing the Nathan James at Lomas Point?"

Mike could feel Danny tense involuntarily at the question, obviously recalling the moment when he realized that his future wife and unborn baby were running full speed into a deathtrap. "Only too well."

"Pretty much like that," Mike replied.

"Don't know what you're complaining about. Hell, you didn't even get shot that day," Danny murmured after a moment, causing Mike to snort at the unexpected humor.

"It was your own damn fault," Mike shot back. "Next time run faster."

The two men fell silent, the minutes ticking by until Danny spoke again. "You want me to take Halsey closer? See if he picks up anything we missed?"

Mike checked his watch. 0330. "Wait until 0500. I want the guys awake, just in case we catch someone's attention."

The next ninety minutes seemed to take an eternity. Finally, Danny rose from his position, slipping silently into the gloom with Halsey. Exactly fifty-nine minutes later, as the sun began to creep up in the sky, casting shadows through the trees, the empty spot was filled by Jeter. "It's time, sir."

Mike thought through the plan again – not that it was really much of a plan, despite the hours spent discussing it. Once they were through the front gate, he, Russ and Tex would take the large building where the guards were located, Carlton and Teylor sweeping immediately to the side to a smaller structure that appeared to be a shed but might be holding hostages. Wolf, Rick, and Danny would approach from the opposite side, coming through the back fence with Halsey and focusing on the rear building where Whitney was seen the night before. Cameron and Ray would remain in the trees to provide an eagle eye view and cover fire.

They would just have to wing the rest.

"Green, you in position?"

There was no response for so long that a chill swept over Mike, his hand rising to hit his mic again, his head going to a place that it shouldn't – couldn't – go right now, recalling the men he and Tom lost rescuing them from Takehaya. Then Green's quiet, breathless voice came on. "There was a loose board in the fence. Target one neutralized."

"Stupid overachiever," Mike muttered before clicking twice, the prearranged signal to go.

Each step towards the compound seemed to take a year, each branch cracking under their boots jarring Mike, each shadow taking the figure of Shaw returning from the dead to taunt him. Breaking through the gate was the easy part, Mike having made the executive decision to simply blow it open, not trying for a stealth entrance. Turning to his first objective, Mike smashed the window of the building, tossing in a smoke grenade to cover their entrance. Within a minute the four hostiles were neutralized, one never making it off the couch where he was sleeping, the others barely having enough time to rise from the table where they sat playing cards in the dim light. Sweeping through the building they found two more men, one managing to get off a shot at Tex before Russ took him out. The Nevadian waved them on as he wheezed, attempting to catch the breath knocked out by the bullet that hit his vest. Exiting the building no more than two minutes after entering, Mike and Russ ran straight into Carlton and Teylor.

"Structure is clear," Carlton called, and all four men turned to the final building.

Yanking the door open, Mike ran straight into the barrel of a gun.


	5. Chapter 5

_Yanking the door open, Mike ran straight into the barrel of a gun._

It took Mike a second to confirm that, not only was he still alive (which was somewhat amazing given how recklessly he just ran through that door), but he wasn't even sporting any blood loss. Looking up, Mike met Wolf's steady gaze. "The hostages are secure, Captain."

"Thank you Senior Chief." Mike glanced around the interior of the cabin, taking in the open layout and small loft, presumably where the guard Green was currently dragging out the door was originally positioned, the optimal spot for one or two men to keep an eye on a far larger number of prisoners. And there were far more than three people located in this room, something that Mike registered before his attention was caught by an oh-so-familiar figure.

" _Dad!"_

Shaylyn's voice bounced off the walls as she scrambled across the space towards her father. Mike scooped her up, hauling her against his chest, needing that physical contact to assure himself that she was really here and not an invention of his imagination. A flash to his right had Mike turning, shoving Shay behind him protectively, only to realize that the person running towards him was Whitney. Collapsing to his knees, Mike pulled both girls to him, not caring about the tears streaking down his cheeks, not caring that he was likely squeezing them too hard, not caring about the people staring at them.

 _His girls were alive._

"I missed you so much." He managed to gasp, kissing first Whitney and then Shaylyn's heads, both so much taller than when he left, so much older.

"Captain?" Russ's quiet but commanding voice finally caught Mike's attention.

"Yes, Master Chie….Christine." The word came out as an exhale. Mike froze, fearing that this was a dream – or maybe a nightmare where Shaw would jump out from the back room to steal them away from him.

Christine smiled, her lips trembling as she took in the sight of her husband standing there with his arms around their daughters. She, like the girls, looked far older than when he left, her auburn locks now streaked with gray and the furrows on her forehead deeper than before. But she was still as beautiful as the day he married her – and just as feisty. "What took you so damn long?"

"I thought you were dead," Mike croaked as Christine joined the group, allowing him to stretch his arms around all three of them. "All those months I thought you were dead. And the whole time you were here."

"Mom knew you would find us," Whitney replied, tipping her tear stained face back to look at him. Mike drank in her features. She was a young lady now, a carbon copy of Christine twenty years ago when he first met her, back when Mike was a seasoned bachelor with no plans to settle down. That all changed the night Mike and his partner were called to break up a bar fight, resulting in a bottle smashed over Mike's head and a visit to the ER. Christine was the nurse who patched him up, making sure to deliver a stern lecture on the evils of getting in the way of flying glass the entire time.

Mike left the hospital that night with twelve stitches and Christine's number and he hadn't looked at another woman since.

"I'm sorry I didn't come earlier, sorry I wasn't there when..."

Christine cut him off. "You didn't know, Mike. And even if you did, your mission...I had no idea...when you said you were on a mission." She stopped, her stuttering so uncharacteristic. "You found the _cure_ Mike. You saved the world. Me. The girls."

"But not our son," Mike said sadly.

"If you have been home you would have gone to that camp with Lucas, and you would be dead," Christine argued back. "Don't you think I know that?"

There was the fiery, fiercely loyal woman he married so many years ago. The one person he could always depend on to understand him, to overlook his flaws, to forgive him when he screwed up, to stand by his side through thick and thin. "I..."

Russ chose that moment to interrupt. "Captain, Commander Burk is asking whether it is safe to bring in the helo. We should probably move the hostages as soon as possible, as a precaution."

There was no need for Russ to go into more details. They were all suspicious of how easily the rescue had gone. "Girls, can you wait over there while I talk to the Master Chief for a few minutes?"

Mike watched, reluctantly, as Whitney and Shaylyn moved towards the back of the room where Tex and Danny stood talking to the other hostages. Mike would have preferred that Christine join them, but after twenty years of marriage, he had a pretty good idea of how poorly she would have responded to the suggestion.

"How many civilians are there here?" Mike asked, the question directed at Russ but Christine answered.

"Eighteen. There are eighteen of us."

Mike considered the list of names that Croft had provided, wondering whether he should be thrilled that eighteen of them had been recovered alive, or terrified that more than half of the people on the list were still missing. Twenty-nine people were still out there – somewhere. Assuming that they were even still alive.

Mike turned to Christine. "How many guards were there here?"

Christine didn't hesitate. "Ten."

Frowning, Mike spoke before thinking. "You outnumbered the guards. Why didn't you run?"

"Run where?" Christine demanded, eyes flashing. "We're in the middle of nowhere, Mike! And even if we knew where to go, some of these people are sick. One woman is pregnant. How long would we have made it before we got caught?"

Properly chastised, Mike turned until he found the man he was looking for. "Green!"

Danny jogged across the cabin. "Yes, Captain?"

"How many targets were neutralized?"

The response was immediate. "Eight confirmed, sir."

"So two are still missing," he murmured. For the first time, Mike really looked at the hostages, heart sinking as Christine's words sunk in. Two of the group were elderly. One woman looked about ready to give birth. There were four small children. Walking out wasn't an option. Mike turned to Russ. "What's the closest base?"

"Fort Detrick. Commander Burk is coordinating with them as we speak. Unfortunately they only have two helicopter pilots so it will take five trips," Russ replied. The men fell silent as they did the math. Five trips, minimum of forty minutes each, meant four hours of being sitting ducks were the two missing guards to reappear.

"That's a long time to be in the open, sir," Teylor added, his voice dubious.

"I'll take a team and the dog. We'll track them down, Captain," Danny offered. The ' _or at least keep them busy while you evacuate'_ part unspoken but understood.

Mike nodded. "Master Chief, you're in charge until we return."

"With all due respect, sir, your place is here." As usual, Russ was completely respectful while disregarding Mike's orders and, as usual, he was right. No matter how much Mike wanted to hunt down – and kill – the men responsible for kidnapping his family, his first priority needed to be keeping Christine and the girls safe, keeping everyone in this room safe. Making sure that they got out of here alive.

Mike nodded. "Stay sharp, Green. You have a baby to go home to."

The younger man grinned. "So do you, sir. I'm pretty sure Kara will raise you from the dead just to kill you herself if you leave her to take care of Kaito permanently."

Green, Taylor, Cruz, and Burk were walking out the door before Mike noticed that Christine was watching him with narrowed eyes. "This is the part where you tell me that Kaito is a dog."

"I'll assist Tex in vaccinating the hostages," Russ said, quickly vacating the corner of the cabin, leaving the two of them alone.

Mike stared at Christine, searching for the words to explain how – while she and the girls were being held hostage – he managed to acquire a baby. Trying to figure out a way to tell her that he had a son without sounding like he had moved on. Without making her think that he had simply replaced them. But while Mike was groping for words, Christine drew her own conclusions.

"What did you do Mike?" The heartbreak in her voice was enough to spur Mike to action.

" _Not that_." Mike reached for Christine's arm. "I've never cheated, Christine. _Never_. You know me better than that."

Christine gave him a sharp nod, but Mike knew that he needed to explain, quickly, before she reached another conclusion.

"Kaito's father was a Captain in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. The Chinese took advantage of the pandemic to try to wipe the entire country out. Takehaya survived, for a while, but lost his crew. He was," Mike paused, trying to think of how to explain his unlikely bond with the man who kidnapped him when all he wanted to do right now was kill the men responsible for kidnapping his family, "an ally. His homeland was devastated, he and his wife both dying. His only remaining men were either sick or criminals, they weren't equipped to raise a child. He asked me to raise his son. I couldn't say no."

Christine's face relaxed briefly when Mike began talking but, as he continued, her lips pursed in a way that Mike knew well. She was trying to control her emotions. "A boy?"

"Yes."

"How..." Her voice broke. "How old?"

"Two months."

"I don't think I can do that, Mike. Not after what happened with Lucas..."

"He doesn't replace Lucas. He never did." Mike croaked, his voice low, beseeching. He tried to wrap his arms around Christine, but she side-stepped him, arms folded across her chest.

"Did you stop to think about what that would mean to me? To the girls?" Christine's voice was raw.

Mike couldn't avoid the brutal truth. "I thought you were all dead. I searched the house in Norfolk. I went to Deer Park. I even went to Chicago, thinking you might have gone there. I never stopped looking – _never_ – but as the cure spread and there was no word, it was hard to keep hoping. I knew that you would come to St. Louis if you could."

"We didn't make it to St. Louis because we were tricked into coming here, thinking you sent for us," Christine snapped, angrily brushing a tear away from her face.

"I know that now," Mike explained. "But only because we found a recording of you and the girls in Shaw's desk after she was shot."

"You mean Allison Shaw? The lunatic? She's dead?" Christine demanded, apparently distracted by the new information.

"Yes. She kidnapped Tom's family, murdered his father. She was killed during the rescue." Having spent twenty years arguing with Christine, Mike knew when to press his advantage. "We don't need to talk about Kaito now, Christine. One problem at a time, right? So let's focus on getting back to St. Louis and then we'll go from there."

But Christine was having none of it. Biting her lip, she brushed away and angry tear. "Isn't that what you always do? Push off our problems? Then disappear off to sea for six months?"

"That's not…"

Christine cut him off. "You're right, Mike. We need to focus on getting out of here. But once we're in St. Louis and safe, I want my own space, at least for a while. I don't know if I can be married to you, Mike. Not after this."

Mike swallowed, Christine's words hanging between them. This wasn't about Kaito, not really. He was just the trigger. This was about Lucas, about the Florida desk job, about the long deployments, about moving away from their friends and family in Chicago, about joining the Navy to begin with. This was about everything that he and Christine had fought about for the past twenty years.

But this was also different. Because Lucas was dead, and Mike couldn't rewind time to go back and save him, and because Kaito was alive, and Mike wouldn't turn his back on the infant.

And apparently there were some things that Christine couldn't understand - or forgive - after all.

Without conscious thought, Mike found himself parroting back the words that Christine said to him just before he left for the Arctic. "That's a decision that you have to make yourself, Christine."

Turning away, Mike hit his comm. "Green, sitrep?"


	6. Chapter 6

"Did I spit-up this much when I was a baby?" Shaylyn asked, gently wiping the white chunks splattered down Kaito's face with a soft cloth and popping the bottle back in the infant's mouth.

"Nah. Doc thinks Kaito is having trouble digesting the formula. When you were little we would have switched brands, but now there's just the one kind," Mike explained.

"I think he's smiling for real now," Shaylyn continued, making silly faces at the baby as she spoke. Mike stopped his attempt to make dinner – cooking was not one of his skills – to watch the two. Christine might have declined to meet Kaito upon her arrival in St. Louis three weeks ago, but the girls did not have the same reservations. To Mike's relief, both took to Kaito immediately, demonstrating little to none of the sibling rivalry that Mike expected. Whitney treated the infant almost like a pet, clucking over him on her way past but not spending any length of time with him. Shaylyn, on the other hand, spent every minute that she could with Kaito. Holding him, feeding him, even changing his diaper, there was no task that Shaylyn was unwilling to tackle.

"Well, don't tell your sister, but I'm pretty sure that you are his favorite," Mike said, dropping his voice to a whisper.

Shaylyn giggled. "He likes Whitney a lot too. She showed Mom the picture you took of the two of them together and Mom agreed that he was smiling at her. Whitney doesn't understand why she won't even meet him."

Mike winced as he imagined Christine's reaction to seeing a picture of Kaito, no matter how innocently the topic was raised – and Mike had his suspicions on that front. Whitney wasn't known for her subtly (she was his daughter, after all) and she had made her unhappiness with the current situation – a situation which she blamed on her mother – perfectly clear to both of her parents.

Upon arriving back in St. Louis, Mike had turned his townhouse over to Christine and the girls, moving three minutes away to Tex's place. Well, Tex's place on paper. As far as Mike could tell, the man hadn't set foot in the apartment in months, instead electing to stay at Andrea's house with Kat. With anyone except Andrea, Mike would have assumed that the two were shacking up, but Mike knew his XO well enough to be very confident that when she said Tex was sleeping on the couch, she meant it. Still, wherever Tex was sleeping, it wasn't at the apartment, which meant that Mike had the run of the place. Although the girls spent most nights with Christine, both liked to spend the evenings with Mike and Kaito, giving him plenty of time to become reacquainted.

"You know that your Mom has gone through a lot, right Pumpkin?" Mike asked gently.

Shaylyn shrugged, her attention appearing to be on Kaito, but Mike wasn't fooled. Christine wasn't the only one who had been through the wringer over the past year.

 _Living through a pandemic._

 _Losing friends and neighbors._

 _Watching their brother die._

 _Being kidnapped and held hostage for months._

 _Not knowing if their father was dead or alive._

One of the first things Mike did once they were back in St. Louis was make appointments for both girls with the therapist Kelly Tophet recommended, a woman named Liliana Small, who had worked with Ava. Given everything that had happened since he hugged them goodbye and left for the Arctic, Mike was taken aback when Whitney's primary complaint to the therapist was about the state of her parents' marriage, but Dr. Small assured him that it was normal. For months Christine had kept the girls going with promises that Mike would find them, her reassurances taking on an almost fairy tale quality after the Nathan James and Mike actually found a cure for the Red Flu, and sustaining the girls during their lowest points. So it was little wonder that they were unhappy with the reality that they now faced, one which didn't coincide with the future they had been dreaming of for months.

"Yeah, but so have you. Mom said so. And so did Uncle Tom."

Before Mike could press on that last point a little, the door to the apartment was thrown open.

"Hello? Anyone home?" Kat didn't wait for an answer before popping her head into the kitchen. "Is Whitney here?"

"She's in the bedroom," Mike began, only to be interrupted by his older daughter, who walked into the kitchen wearing only a shirt. "What the hell are you wearing? Go put on some pants!"

Whitney rolled her eyes, exchanging a glance with Kat that had both teens giggling. "This is a _dress_ , Dad. Tex bought it for Kat and she's letting me borrow it."

Mike scowled, making a mental note to read Tex the riot act. "And why would you need a dress anyway?"

"For her date, Dad. Duh," Shaylyn piped up.

"Date?" Mike was completely blindsided. "What date? With who? When? You are way too young to date!"

"Girls, perhaps you should go hang out in your room while I have a chat with your father," Andrea said calmly, the first time Mike noticed that she was even in the apartment. Whitney flounced out of the kitchen whispering something to Kat – probably about what a tyrant her father was. Shaylyn deposited Kaito in the bouncy chair sitting on the table and scurried after them, the infant losing out to the appeal of the older girls. Andrea reached past Mike to turn the stove off. "Pretty sure those noodles are about five minutes past done."

Mike said the first thing that came to mind. "Tex lets Kat dress like that?"

Andrea snorted. "God, no. He probably thought it was a shirt, if he even paid any attention to what she was buying at all. The man is clueless when it comes to raising a teenage girl."

"Coffee?" Mike asked, pouring himself a cup, mind still spinning over the news that Whitney had a _date_. When did his little girl get old enough to date?

"Sure." Andrea busied herself cooing over Kaito while Mike poured another cup, grabbing her two sugars out of habit. When Mike turned he could see that the baby was almost asleep. "It's a school dance. One of the Abbott boys asked Kat to go with him. Whitney's going with his brother. Nothing to worry about, Mike."

Despite his relief, Mike still felt like he's just been punched in the gut. "How do you know that?"

Andrea shrugged. "Kat knows the drill at this point. She tells me where she's going and who she's going with, I give her space. She lies to me or tries to sneak around, she gets to spend her evenings and weekends with me repairing engines. It works for us."

"It was all so much easier when they were little," Mike lamented, sitting down across from Andrea. "Most of the time I don't know what to do with them at all. Christine was the one who handled that stuff – coordinating school and sports and appointments, knew where they were and what they were up to. All I had to do was show up when told."

"No change on that front, then?" Andrea asked, sipping her coffee.

Mike's grip on his cup tightened and he forced himself to relax. "No. Kelly said to give her time. That she's still grieving for Lucas. And I get that. Hell, I'm still grieving for him too. And if this was about me not being there when he died, well, I get that. But her not wanting to be around Kaito, not even agreeing to meet him. That just isn't Christine, Eng. Not the Christine that I knew, anyway."

"Maybe not, Mike, but losing a child, it does a number on you." Andrea's finger ran around the rim of her cup, her eyes fixed on the cabinet behind Mike's head for a minute, her thoughts obviously not on Christine or Mike or Lucas. "And Christine didn't have time to grieve properly, Mike. She was busy staying alive, busy keeping the girls alive. She couldn't risk falling apart. Your wife is a good woman. She'll come around eventually."

Mike wished he could be that confident. He was, at the beginning, thinking that Christine just needed some time to wrap her mind around the idea of raising another child. After all, this wasn't like the time he surprised the kids with a puppy without running it past her first. But as the days stretched into weeks, his confidence waned. "I guess we'll see."

"How's it working out with Mrs. Foster watching Kaito?" Andrea asked, obviously sensing that Mike was done discussing his wife – or ex-wife as the case might be.

"Surprisingly well," Mike replied, perking up. Since Debbie was already watching both boys while Kara worked, she offered to continue doing so until he figured out a more permanent solution. "The woman seems to have an endless amount of energy."

Andrea smiled. "Tex told me that she is arranging some social events for the crew over the next couple of months. Apparently she convinced Captain Chandler that it would be good for morale."

"So long as it's not something ridiculous like painting or cooking," Mike grumbled, drawing a chuckle from Andrea.

She nodded her head towards the disaster on the stove. "I don't know. Seems to me that you could use some help in the cooking department. Burning noodles takes a special kind of talent."

The conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door, the sound just loud enough to rouse Kaito from his nap. Upset by the disturbance, he began to fuss. Andrea waved Mike towards the hallway. "You handle whoever that is and I'll deal with crabby-pants here."

Expecting a messenger – Tom had a habit of sending someone over with paperwork at least twice a week – Mike was caught off-guard by the sight of Christine standing on the other side of the door, her hands twisting the handle of the bag she was holding, a sure sign that she was nervous. As the silence stretched on, she arched an eyebrow at Mike.

"Can I come in?"

Embarrassed to realize that they had been standing in the doorway for who knows how long, Mike waved her inside. "Of course."

Ushering Christine into the kitchen, Mike motioned towards Andrea, who was bouncing Kaito. "Christine, you remember Andrea Garnett. She's my XO now."

If Andrea was surprised by this turn of events, it didn't show. She nodded politely. "Mrs. Slattery. Your timing is perfect. I was just asking Mike if the girls could come spend the night with Kat and he said he needed to run it by you."

"Oh, yes, Whitney's friend Kat lives with you, doesn't she?" Christine replied, sounding distracted. "That's fine. Assuming the girls want to go, of course."

"Let me go rouse the troops then," Andrea replied. She began to set Kaito back in his bouncer.

"Here, let me."

Mike wasn't sure who was more surprised by the offer. Andrea shot a quick glance at Mike, who simply shrugged, before surrendering the infant to Christine. No more than a minute passed before Andrea was marching three smirking girls through the kitchen. "I'll have them back in time for school tomorrow."

"Behave." Mike leveled a stern look at his daughters, one that was completely ignored as Whitney gave him two thumbs up behind Christine's head. A minute later the door closed behind the foursome, leaving Mike alone with his wife for the first time since, well, since before he left for the Arctic actually. He looked towards Christine, who was standing by the window with Kaito in her arms, her back towards him. Needing to break the silence, Mike spoke. "Coffee?"

"Sure." Christine turned, and for the first time Mike saw the tears running down her face.

Habit propelled Mike towards Christine but at the last moment he stopped, uncertain of his welcome. "Do you want me to…" He trailed off, having no idea what to say.

Christine smiled, reaching out to squeeze Mike's hand. "First coffee. Then I think it's time we talked."


	7. Chapter 7

"Thank you." Christine took a sip of her coffee – if you could call it that. In the old days, before the pandemic, Mike would have asked her if she wanted a splash of caffeine with her milk, but now didn't seem like the right time to be cracking jokes. Setting down her cup, Christine gazed down at Kaito, running a finger over his soft cheek. "He doesn't look anything like Lucas."

Mike picked up his own coffee before tentatively offering a response. "He's Japanese."

The corner of Christine's mouth quirked. "I know that, Mike. You told me, remember? It doesn't make sense but, when I pictured him, I imagined him looking like Lucas." Christine gave Mike a pointed look, one that he was _very_ familiar with. "Whitney showed me the picture you took of her and Kaito."

"Um, yeah, that wasn't my idea," Mike muttered, hoping that wasn't the reason for Christine's visit today. Not that he was above using the kids to get his way, less than subtly mentioning how good pizza sounded for dinner or what movie was playing in the theater that weekend and letting them do the nagging for him. But this was different.

He couldn't nag or trick Christine into raising another child. It wasn't fair to Kaito. It wasn't fair to Christine. Hell, it wasn't fair to him, spending the rest of his life with a woman who resented him.

To Mike's surprise, Christine chuckled. "I know. Whitney hasn't been shy about expressing her opinion on my reluctance to come by and meet Kaito, and all of the reasons why that makes me a terrible person. She can be very compelling."

"She'll make a good lawyer someday."

It was an old joke, but one that drew a wry smile. "Kaito's asleep. Do you want me to put him in his crib?"

"Sure." Mike found himself feeling strangely awkward as he led Christine into the small bedroom he shared with Kaito. Not that he'd done much, or anything, to personalize the space. Simply put his clothes in the empty closet and Kaito's belongings in the equally empty bureau and shifted the bed against the wall to make room for the crib. Still, it was his bedroom. A room that he had shared with Christine for close to twenty years. Seeing her here, now, standing there with Kaito, brought back a wealth of memories.

There was the apartment in Chicago that he and Christine rented as newlyweds, back when they were unable to keep their hands off each other. Then there was the house in Newport, the two-bedroom with the perfectly decorated nursery that Whitney never actually used since the kid refused to sleep in her own room, forcing Mike and Christine to move the crib into the master and sneak off to the couch whenever they wanted to get frisky. After Newport was Florida, one of his longer tours, where they finally got their bedroom back just in time for Shaylyn to arrive, Mike's brilliant idea of having the girls share a room crumbling as soon as he realized that having his bedroom back was pointless when he was being woken up every ten minutes by a screaming baby _and_ a screaming toddler. It was far easier letting Christine share the room with the girls while he crashed on the couch. And then finally the home in Norfolk, the house where Lucas was born. By that point Mike was so used to having a kid in the bedroom that he didn't bother with a nursery, simply setting up the crib at the end of he and Christine's bed and talking Christine into a new, less lumpy, couch.

Christine set Kaito down, her hand running along the top rail of the crib before she started the mobile that Alisha had fashioned out of spare parts, the tiny stars and boats dancing above Kaito's head. Christine glanced over her shoulder, her face curious. "Is this handmade?"

"Green made the crib on our way back to the States. He wanted something to keep him busy." It was a feeling Mike understood. With no word from Kara or Debbie after President Oliver's disappearance, Danny needed a way to keep his mind off his family during the long days between Japan and San Diego, days with little to do but recuperate and train and prepare for what was waiting for them.

Christine's eyes flickered over to him. "Tom filled me in on what happened while you were in the Pacific. About the kidnapping and Takehaya and his pirates and how Shaw sold you out to Peng."

"He did?" Mike raised an eyebrow. Tom had met with Christine several times over the past two weeks, with the official purpose of figuring out where Shaw might have hidden the remaining hostages. Now Mike was wondering how much of that time was actually spent discussing Shaw and how much was focused on Mike. "What, exactly did he say?"

But Christine's attention had strayed, her eyes now fixed on the small mirror sitting on top of the bureau, and the picture that Mike tucked there upon his arrival in St. Louis. The one that had travelled the Pacific with him. Christine's hand shook as she picked it up. "Where did you get this?"

Mike found his throat tightening as he remembered the day the Nathan James arrived in Norfolk. "At Deer Park. The place was empty, but I found the tent where you and the girls were staying. It looked like you left in a hurry. The picture albums were still there, along with Whitney's sweatshirt."

Christine's fingers clenched around the picture, her eyes shutting, breath becoming ragged. Worried, Mike draped an arm around her shoulders, maneuvering her into the living room. "You should sit down."

Settling Christine on the couch, Mike grabbed her coffee from the kitchen, pushing the warm cup into her hands before sitting next to her. "I miss him too." The words were a whisper, admitted before Mike realized what he was doing.

"I know. Your voice that day, when you called from the Arctic. It was so relieved at first. You were rambling about how worried you were when it took so long it took to get through, how glad you were to reach me, how you didn't know anything about the pandemic. And then you asked about the kids…." A tear rolled down Christine's face. "I couldn't save him, Mike. My baby was sick and I couldn't save him."

Without conscious thought, Mike found his arms encircling Christine, pulling her against his chest as she cried, soaking his shirt, the grief and pain of the past eighteen months pouring out in a torrent of tears. When the storm finally subsided, Christine didn't move away, shifting her head to rest on Mike's shoulder, one hand circling his waist. Mike kissed the top of her head, the familiar scent of her shampoo tickling his nose.

Finally he spoke. "There was nothing – _nothing_ – you could have done for Lucas, Christine. It wasn't your fault."

Christine sniffed into Mike's shirt. "There was nothing that either one of us could have done. I know that. It just doesn't make it any easier."

Mike didn't argue. He couldn't erase Christine's pain any more than she could make the ache in his heart disappear. Lucas was gone, and neither one of them would ever be whole again.

"What do you want to talk about, Christine? Is this about Lucas? Or about Kaito?" Mike asked finally, unable to beat around the bush any longer.

"You always were blunt, Mike. It's one of the things that I love about you. You get right to the point." Christine pulled away, standing and walking over to the window. "Do you remember Michelle? The hostage who was pregnant?"

Mike had to wrack his brain to come up with an image of the timid brunette. Her father was an admiral, apparently one who did not succumbed to blackmail if his mutilated body and slashed throat were anything to go by. Frankly, the woman was lucky to be alive. With her father dead, there was no reason to keep Michelle alive either, but Shaw must have been too busy staging a coup to send the kill order. "Yeah."

"She had her baby last night. A little boy. There were … complications and she almost died. Your man Rios is a pretty good doctor for a guy without any training in obstetrics."

"He's had a bit of practice," Mike responded, waiting for Christine to continue, tramping down the desire to tell her to get to the damn point.

Christine folded her arms over her chest. "He mentioned that he delivered Kaito."

Mike's patience was wearing thin. "He did. It was his first c-section."

"Michelle was hemorrhaging and we couldn't stop the bleeding. She was holding Harry and then she grabbed my hand and she asked me what would happen to him if she died." Christine turned, her fingers digging into the back of a chair. "I didn't even stop to think, Mike, I said that I would take care of him. I promised a dying woman that I would raise her child without taking a single second to think about what that would mean."

"You did the right thing, Christine."

Her eyes rose to his, slightly teary but firm. "I know. And so did you. Michelle deserved to know that someone would take care of her son if she died. Takehaya, well, as far as I'm concerned he didn't deserve squat. He kidnapped you, Mike, and I'm not ready to let that go. But Kyoko, _she_ deserved to know that her son would be taken care of after she was gone. It wasn't her fault that her husband turned into a damn pirate."

Mike decided that there was no benefit in pointing out that Christine's logic was somewhat flawed – Kyoko wasn't exactly an innocent victim, accepting the blood "donations" from Miller without protest – not wanting to get into an argument about what lengths a mother would go to in order to save her child. "Does that mean I'm out of the doghouse?"

He was expecting Christine to chuckle or roll her eyes or start giving him directions on packing things up to move them into the townhouse, but instead she took a deep breath. "I'm sorry for the way I reacted, back in Pennsylvania."

"Chris…"

Mike tried to interrupt but was stopped by Christine's raised hand. "No, that's our problem, you know. We don't talk through things. I get pissed and yell and you make jokes and we move on but we never resolve anything. I figured that out." Christine grimaced. "Actually, Kelly figured that out. She's a good therapist, and we've gotten to be friends."

"Is she still dating that lame-ass friend of Green's?" Mike asked, the words out of his mouth before he realized that he was proving Christine's point. He flopped back on the couch. "Okay, I'll shut up."

Christine joined him, her hands clasped on her lap as she sat. "I don't want a divorce, Mike. I never did. I was upset and I lashed out at you, but I never stopped loving you. I want us to be a family – you, me, Whitney, Shaylyn, and Kaito. I know we have some things to work out, but we can do that. I got some names from Kelly…" Mike's face must have given him away because Christine's eyes narrowed. "Names of _family therapists_ and I think we should go."

"Fine." Mike shrugged. After a year spent wondering where they were and how they were doing, therapy was a small price to pay for going to sleep every night under the same roof as his family. He wrapped his arms around Christine again, twisting strands of her hair between his fingers. "Should we go tell the girls?"

Christine turned to look at him, her face a combination of disbelief and mischief. "Our first night alone – almost alone – in how long and you want to get the girls?"

A slow grin spread over Mike's face as he pulled Christine onto his lap, cutting off her surprised squeal with his lips. "On second thought, they can wait until morning."


	8. Chapter 8

"Painting?" Mike tried to keep his voice neutral, knowing that he had failed miserably when he heard Andrea snicker. He turned to scowl at her, but Christine was having none of it, propelling him towards the front of the gym where Carlton Burk sat in front of a table full of sign-up sheets, looking abjectly miserable. Although the same could be said about many of the sailors standing around the room, looking decidedly uncomfortable with tonight's planned activities.

"Painting and alcohol and _no kids_ ," Christine replied, making sure to emphasize the last point. "I think it sounds delightful."

"I can think of better things to do with no kids around," Mike muttered. Even though he was anticipating the elbow to his stomach, it still stung. "But it's good for the crew to see their senior officers participating."

Christine smiled brightly at Carlton Burk. "So what are the options here?"

"You can do watercolors or make a build-a-bear…"

Mike cut Carlton off. "Build-a-bear?"

"To donate to the kids staying at the school while we hunt for their families," Carlton explained. "A lot of them didn't arrive with much."

"What a thoughtful gesture," Christine gushed, and Mike – silently – agreed. He had seen more than his share of misery over the last eighteen months, but the children were the hardest to bear. Teenagers wandering into St. Louis alone or, even worse, with a couple of younger siblings or friends in tow, parents dead or missing. Teachers arriving with elementary school students who weren't allowed home when the quarantines were put in place, a decision which likely saved their lives, but left them orphans. A dozen infants from the NICU at Mercy Hospital in St. Louis who were kept alive by their nurses, most with no surviving parents. The list went on and on.

But no matter how moving the cause, Mike had no intention of building any kind of bear, the toys still bringing to mind Niels' infected teddy bear, a guttural reaction that didn't change no matter how many cute, inoffensive panda bears and polar bears that Miller and Tex inundated Kaito with.

"I'll let Mrs. Foster know that you said so, ma'am," Carlton replied, flashing Christine his most charming smile and reminding Mike why the young lieutenant was such a popular member of the singles scene in St. Louis. "There's a place to paint ceramics as well, although Mrs. Foster seemed a little uncertain about how we would fire them."

"So this is supposed to be moral boosting?" He asked Carlton while Christine signed them up for every available activity. "I figured that it would be things like flag football or a pub crawl."

"I wish," Carlton muttered.

"Guess you should have gone to some of the planning meetings then," Andrea said briskly as she joined them, Kat and Ray following her hand-in-hand. Seeing the two teens together, Mike raised an eyebrow at Andrea, who merely shrugged. Mike opened his mouth to give the young sailor a stern lecture on the inappropriateness of dating an under aged girl, before abruptly changing his mind.

Ray might be a little wild at times, but he had a good head on his shoulders, something he had proven when he managed to keep his posse alive. Besides, after spending almost a year around the crew, Ray had to know that while Mike might put the fear of God into him, Tex wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone who hurt his daughter.

Assuming Kat didn't take care of the problem herself.

"Mrs. Foster suggested it," Kat explained while Ray shifted uncomfortably under Mike's steady gaze, his cheeks flushing. "Said we needed some culture. Dad spent the last two days hunting down bottles of real wine, none of that stuff in a box."

It took a few seconds for Kat's statement to sink in. "There's no beer?"

"Would we do that to you, Mike?" Tom asked with a laugh. At the sound of the CNO's voice, Ray went from red to white. Hiding a smirk, Mike turned to greet Tom and, slightly more surprising, Sasha. "Let's get some drinks. Ladies."

Mike waited until they were halfway across the room before asking the obvious question. "Did you two come together?"

Uncharacteristically, Tom paused. "Yeah. We decided that we weren't going to hide things – from the kids or the crew. "

"Big step," Mike observed.

Tom was silent for a moment. "Dad used to say that living for tomorrow wasn't living at all. I finally decided to listen to him."

"He liked Sasha, didn't he?" Mike asked.

Tom nodded, a ghost of a smile passing over his face. "He used to call her the one that got away."

"How did the kids take the news?" Mike asked, changing topics, knowing that Tom found talking about Jed difficulty.

"Sam was fine, asking Sasha if she would teach him to shoot a gun. I was expecting more resistance from Ashley but she took it surprisingly well. It probably helps that Whitney likes Sasha. Ashley has a major case of hero worship. I guess surviving being kidnapped by Shaw made your daughter something of a celebrity at school," Tom finished dryly.

Not that Mike was surprised – Shaylyn felt the same way about Kat – but the idea of anyone idolizing his eldest daughter was a little scary. With her parents back together, Whitney had turned her attention to the, as she termed it, dismal lack of extracurricular activities at St. Louis's newly reopened high school and even talked Christine into coaching a dance team to perform at various local events. Mike had initially been in support of the idea, figuring that the exercise was good, until he saw how skimpy the uniforms were. The fighting had ceased only when Christine suggested that, given the approaching colder weather, the girls might want to wear leggings under their skirts, a compromise that Mike and Whitney both grudgingly accepted. "And the crew?"

Tom shot Mike a look. "Miller slipped and told me that Tex won the betting pool. Seems like nobody was the least bit surprised."

Mike shrugged. "Hard to keep secrets with this group. God knows how Foster and Green managed it as long as they did."

"We were distracted by a pandemic," Tom pointed out. "And, thinking back, I'm pretty sure that we were the only ones who didn't know. None of the crew seemed very surprised when it came out."

Mike scanned the room as he and Tom arrived at the make-shift bar, where Bacon was busy setting out drinks and appetizers. "Where is Green, by the way?"

"Officially Green's watching the baby since Mrs. Foster is coordinating the event," Tom replied. "Unofficially, Kara let him off the hook in exchange for letting her sleep late."

"Not much of an ask." After considering the options, Mike selected a Sam Adams Lager for Christine and a Stone Brewing IPA for himself. He tipped the bottle at Bacon. "I haven't seen an IPA since before we left for the Arctic. My compliments."

"Turns out that Castille had a pretty nice stash," Bacon replied, beaming. "I'll save the rest of them just for you, Captain."

"Thanks." Mike waited while Tom picked up two glasses of almond champagne. "Champagne?"

"It's Sasha's favorite," Tom explained. "I suspect that Kara wasn't thrilled about the choice of events either. Her suggestions were a shooting competition or softball. Mrs. Foster nixed shooting but reluctantly agreed to softball. Danny and Kara probably flipped to see who was stuck coming tonight."

"Lucky bastard," Mike muttered.

"Well, it's not like you couldn't have used the same excuse," Tom pointed out.

Mike shrugged. "Eh, you know how much Christine likes this couples stuff."

And not that Mike would admit as much to anyone, even Tom, but he didn't mind it either. Christine had begun signing them up for various classes back when Whitney was a baby and the only way to have an uninterrupted conversation was to get out of the house. Besides the cooking class – which was an unmitigated disaster – Mike had been surprised to find that he liked trying new things. There wasn't much to complain about at the mixology classes, of course, and the dancing class turned out to be useful as he moved up the ranks and attended more formal functions. Even yoga wasn't that bad once he accepted that he would never be able to contort his body into those poses and focused on the view instead.

"How are things going?" Tom asked, nodding towards Christine and Sasha, who were chatting with Andrea, Ray and Kat having disappeared.

"Good. Better than things were before I left on that last cruise, honestly. Although having a baby again is an adjustment. I'm too old to be up in the middle of the night." The last was said wryly but, truthfully, Mike knew that Kaito was one of the reasons that things were better. Not because he replaced Lucas – because he didn't – but because Kaito kept him and Christine busy in a way that the girls didn't, forcing them to focus on the present rather than the past.

"Where is Kaito?" Tom asked.

"The girls are babysitting. I think Shaylyn was more excited than we were about tonight. She had the entire evening scheduled, complete with an art project."

Tom turned to check that Mike was serious as they joined Andrea, Sasha and Christine. "Kaito's five months old."

"I know. " Mike said proudly, passing Christine her beer. "She decided that she wants to work in a daycare and needs to practice."

"Are you talking about Shaylyn?" Christine asked. At Mike's nod she smiled. "It's nice having a built in babysitter. Is this Sam Adams? I haven't had one of these since we lived in Rhode Island. Oh, Mike, Sasha is going to teach us Japanese!"

Caught off guard by the abrupt change of topic, Mike sputtered on his beer. "Um, why?"

Christine's eyes narrowed. "Did you read any of those books on international adoption that I gave you?"

"I skimmed them," Mike replied, although it wasn't exactly true. He'd read them, as requested. But, knowing Christine, she had studied them in detail, outlining a plan for the "best" way to make sure that Kaito learned about both his biological and his adoptive family's cultures. Mike's input wasn't really necessary.

"It's important that we teach Kaito about his heritage and learning the language is a first step. If Kaito was born deaf wouldn't you want to learn sign language to talk to him? It's the same thing." Christine continued chattering on about the importance of exposing Kaito to his birth culture as the crowd around them scattered, Andrea with an amused gleam in her eye and Tom with a sympathetic one. Once they were alone, Christine arched an eyebrow at Mike. "Are you going to admit you read the books now?"

"I suppose that I can learn a few words of Japanese," Mike replied, ducking the question.

Christine gave him the same look she used on Whitney when the teenager claimed she had finished her homework at school. "You fold the corners of pages down to mark your spot when you read, Mike. You might be fooling your crew, but I know there's more to you than the gruff, hard-ass sailor that you want them to see."

Mike stared at Christine for a moment before bursting out laughing. "Have I mentioned recently how much I missed you?"

"That's because I keep you honest." Christine took another swig of her drink. "Now let's go paint."

Grinning, Mike mock saluted his wife. "Yes, ma'am."

Christine narrowed her eyes before smiling at him. "Be nice. Otherwise I'll tell everyone how much you actually enjoy these things."


	9. Chapter 9 - Epilogue

_Epilogue_

"It's perfect," Mike announced as he held up a box containing a giraffe riding toy with a removable handle that allowed an adult to push it without bending over.

Whitney barely glanced at her father before turning her attention back to the cans of formula that were, after all, the reason that they were here. Debbie had tipped Mike and Christine off to the fact that this store occasionally stocked hypoallergenic formula and now Mike made a point of coming by every few days. After seven months, he was damn tired of cleaning up vomit, baby or otherwise. "Mom will never go for it. Remember what she said when you brought home the jumperoo?"

"It's not that big." Mike frowned at the toy he was holding. Christine had been less than thrilled when he arrived home with the jumperoo, which came in a box the size of a small car, but she got over her annoyance once Kaito figured out how the thing worked. Some days he would jump for a full thirty minutes, giving Christine a dedicated chunk of time to cook dinner or clean the kitchen or even take a shower.

Whitney rolled her eyes. "It's your funeral."

Mike considered his options. Kaito would love the giraffe, of course, just like he adored the swing and the jumperoo and the walker and the play gym (okay, so maybe the kid _did_ have a lot of toys). He could say it was for Christmas, but Christine had already told him no more gifts, assuring him that all three kids had plenty, a statement which Mike knew perfectly well was a nice way of telling him that he was spoiling them. It was hard, though. After losing Lucas and not knowing whether Whitney and Shaylyn were alive for months, all he wanted to do was make the girls happy. And if a small purchase here and there made them smile, well, Mike didn't see the harm.

And if to prove his point, Whitney suddenly held up a wooden box full of some sort of beads and thread. "Hey, Dad, look, it's a friendship bracelet kit. Shay would love it."

Mike waffled for all of half a second. "Okay, throw it in the cart."

Decision made, he added the giraffe as well as a couple cans of formula, despite it being a brand that Kaito disliked, not wanting to take the risk of running out. Now that he was seven months, Kaito was eating some solid foods, but his main food source was still formula, something that Rios and Christine (who Mike trusted far more when it came to the kids, even if Rios was doing an apprenticeship with a pediatrician in his spare time) both agreed was age appropriate. "Seriously Dad? You know she's going to be pissed."

"Who said it was for Kaito?" Mike asked as he pushed the cart towards the front of the small store.

"Uh-huh." Whitney crossed her arms, tapping her foot, before she smiled. "I won't tell her you bought if you let me go to the movies with Sean Abbott tomorrow night."

"Not a chance in hell."

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"It's for Frankie," Mike explained, ignoring his wife's skeptical look as he set his purchases, including the giraffe, down on the table.

"You bought a riding toy for Frankie without checking with Danny and Kara?" Christine asked, picking up the formula with a slight frown. "None of the soy-based brand?"

"No, although Tex says there is a shipment coming in this week," Mike replied. Sending Tex over to chat up the owner of the small store had been stroke of genius. If anyone could sweet-talk their way into preferential treatment in the form of advance notice when the soy formula would be arriving, it was Tex. Mike looked up to find Christine waiting, arms crossed, the giraffe on the table between then. "I'll text Danny right now. He won't mind."

"Of course he won't," Christine replied. "But he'll end up in the doghouse for agreeing to it without checking with his wife. Text Kara instead."

Before Mike could respond, Shaylyn shuffled into the kitchen, Kaito holding onto her hands, his feet on top of hers. "Look! He's walking."

Mike and Christine exchanged amused glances. Kaito was barely crawling and certainly nowhere near walking, but Shaylyn looked so proud of her brother than neither of them was willing to pop her bubble. Mike leaned down to press a kiss to Shaylyn's forehead before sweeping Kaito up in his arms, tossing the child into the air despite knowing how nervous it made Christine, reveling in the sound of the boy's gurgling laughter. "What a big boy you are Mr. Kaito!"

"Can I go to Ashley's house for dinner?" Shaylyn asked. At Mike's confused glance – Tom wasn't the best cook – she added, "Sasha's making lasagna."

"Sure, honey, but don't be too late. School tomorrow," Christine replied, turning back to the stove, stirring something that looked like chop suey – in other words, leftovers.

Shaylyn was pulling on her jacket when Mike recalled what else he bought at the store. "Oh, hey, take this. Ashley is into those bracelets too, right?"

"This is awesome! Thanks Dad!" With a kiss to his cheek, Shaylyn was gone.

Christine waited until the door was closed. "Remember what I said about buying them so many gifts? They love you, Mike. They're happy to be back together. You don't need to atone for anything."

Mike fought the urge to make a joke as he tossed Kaito in the air again. It was one of the things that their family therapist frowned upon, Mike's rather irreverent sense of humor. "They went through so much and it's such a little thing, Christine. Besides, it helps boost the economy. The government is one of the few employers paying people in cash right now. The more we spend those greenbacks, the faster the country gets back on its feet."

Knowing better than to toss Kaito again unless he wanted to be covered in puke, Mike sat at the table, putting Kaito in his high chair where the child immediately reaching for the bright yellow toy that took up two-thirds of the space. Christine sighed. "Make sure to hide that somewhere he can't find it."

"Yes, ma'am."

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"Michael Joseph Slattery!"

Mike came awake with a jerk, realizing only as he was rolling to his feet that he was on the couch, rather than his bunk at sea, and that the voice calling him was not the OOD, but his wife. "I'm up."

It took a moment for him to figure out why Christine was pointing at the Christmas tree, her face a combination of exasperation and incredulity. There, surrounded by a sea of shredded wrapping paper, cardboard, and toys, sat a very happy Kaito. The infant gurgled and smiled at his parents as he gummed at a piece of festive wrapping paper, extremely happy with the progress he had made in dismantling the gifts while his father snoozed three feet away.

"Fuc...oh." Mike tried to think of something to say. "Sorry?"

"Christmas is in two days, Mike! Two days! I spent hours shopping and wrapping and getting everything ready and now it's all destroyed." Christine picked up a piece of torn and gummed packaging, her voice trembling slightly as she spoke. "Some of these presents are ruined. And there's no time to buy new ones. Tonight we have the girls' holiday concert and tomorrow we're both working and everything will be closed by the time we get out. We won't have any gifts to take to the party at Danny and Kara's house."

"Hey." Mike wrapped his arms around his wife, cutting off her rambling. "This is my fault. I'll fix it. You focus on the stuff you need to get done."

Christine leaned her head against his shoulder. "How in the world are you going to take care of all of that?"

Mike snorted, pulling his phone out of his pocket. "What's the point of having an assistant if you can't make them do menial tasks?"

Leaning back, Christine narrowed her eyes. "That's not really an appropriate use of governmental resources."

Ignoring her, Mike turned his attention to the phone. "McMahon? Good, just the person I was looking for."

His ever ready assistant, an eighteen-year-old kid who acted more like she was fifty, running Mike and Tom's office with an iron fist, didn't hesitate. "What can I help you with, sir?"

With a huff and a roll of her eyes, Christine gathered up Kaito and left the room. "You know that bag in my office?"

"The one full of gifts?" McMahon confirmed and Mike heard the shuffle of paper, no doubt the woman taking notes.

"Yup, that one." Mike hesitated, making sure the door was closed behind her before he spoke again. "Take it over to the Greens' house. Once you do that I need you to come wrap some things here. Christine and I are heading out to the girls' concert in about thirty minutes so I will leave everything on the kitchen table."

"No problem, sir, I'll make sure it is taken care of."

Hanging up, Mike knelt down before the tree and began picking up shredded and crumbled paper, whistling an off-key tune.

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"He's doing it by himself!" Shaylyn squealed as Kaito managed, through sheer luck, to move the giraffe slightly forward on the rug. As a reward, she took him for another spin around the room, stopping twice when the rather uncoordinated child almost took a header.

"He does like it," Christine said, slightly grudgingly but with an indulgent smile. "It was lucky that the store had another one for you to give Frankie. Did Leah have trouble replacing any of the other gifts Kaito got into?"

"Not at all, that kid is a miracle worker," Mike replied from his position lounging on the couch. It was true, too. No matter how crazy the request, McMahon figured out a way to handle it. The kid was smart and resourceful – not unlike a female version of Tex now that Mike thought about it.

"Are you girls happy with your gifts?" Christine asked. Kaito crawled off the giraffe and headed towards his mother, most likely ready for his mid-morning bottle.

"My favorite is the guitar. Uncle Rick promised to teach me and Ashley how to play." Shaylyn stopped, frowning slightly. "Assuming that Ashley got a guitar too."

"She did," Mike confirmed, having discussed this particular gift with Tom and Rick prior to making the purchase. With any of the other guys, Mike would have worried about the girls learning more about cursing than guitars, but not with Miller. If anything, the guy was overly respectful, so uncomfortable calling Christine by her given name – a request that she had made repeatedly – that the two finally compromised on "Mrs. S."

"And you, missy?" Christine asked Whitney.

"This is a pretty cool camera," Whitney responded, which was about as excited as she got about anything these days. "I bet Kat will like it too. She's really into photography. She even set up her own black room in the cellar at Andrea's house."

Mike relaxed, relieved that the present had gone over well. It wasn't difficult to find things that Whitney liked – clothes, makeup, and movies passes were pretty much sure bets – but finding something that would keep her too occupied to spend all of her time with the Abbott boy was a bit more of a challenge.

"Although I wouldn't have minded some earrings like Mom," Whitney continued. "Can I borrow those sometime?"

" _No."_

Mike and Christine spoke simultaneously. Beaming, Christine reached over to give Mike a brief kiss. As he admired the flash from the diamond studs, Mike made a mental note to thank Andrea for the suggestion. He had wanted to do something special for Christine this Christmas – their first Christmas back together, the first time they would be celebrating the holiday since Lucas's death – and from the way Christine's eyes lit up when she opened the box, he was pretty sure he succeeded. "Those belong to your mother."

"Now that we're done with gifts, it's time to eat," Christine interjected, plopping Kaito on Mike's lap. "You girls clean up the paper while I finish lunch."

Shaylyn bounced up. "I'll help you, Mom."

With a sigh, Whitney began gathering up the discarded wrapping paper and packaging, stuffing it into the plastic bag Mike helpfully pulled from under the couch. When she reached the riding giraffe, Whitney turned to Mike with a suspicious look. "You know, I went by the store with Tex and Kat last week and they were out of these giraffes."

Mike shrugged. "They must have re-stocked."

Whitney shook her head, and Mike saw a hint of a smirk. "That's your story? Do you think Mom would buy it?"

Mike raised an eyebrow at his oldest daughter. "Do you have a point?"

"Nope." Whitney's smirk turned into a full-blown grin. "Just that I'm impressed. Well played, Dad. Well played."


	10. Chapter 10 - February 2016

_February 2016_

 _x_

"Can we stop at Solomons after dinner? Kat said they have a bunch of new dresses," Whitney asked, taking a large bite from her taco.

Mike cut into his burrito. "You already have a wardrobe full of clothes, most of which you don't wear because you prefer to wear Kat's stuff. So explain to me why you need a new dress."

"For the dance, Dad," Whitney said with an exasperated sigh. Attempting to tune out the shrill note in her voice, Mike reminded himself that it was _good_ thing that Whitney was reverting back to her _annoying, whiny, and infuriating_ pre-virus behavior. As the girls' counselor had explained at one of their sessions, the perfectly behaved cherub who did everything that Mike asked for the first six months after her arrival in St. Louis was a manifestation of Whitney's fear that Mike might disappear again – especially given the situation with her parents living in separate homes. With Mike and Christine back together and the girls more settled, Stepford-wife-Whitney had disappeared. But as pre-virus Whitney re-emerged, Mike was reminded of the benefits of being deployed.

"Why can't you wear the dress that you wore to the Christmas thing?" Mike asked practically.

Whitney almost dropped her food. "I can't let Jasper see me in the same dress twice, Dad! We're dating for real now."

Mike scowled at the mention of the Abbott boy. "I don't recall giving him permission to ask you out."

"Mom did," Whitney replied, smirking, and Mike knew that there was no point in protesting. Christine would simply overrule him. Besides, Whitney was fifteen. Going to a dance or out to the movies with a boy was perfectly age-appropriate. Mike didn't even dislike Jasper Abbott, who was a decent kid. It was just that Mike had disciplined far too many eighteen-year old seamen to have any naivety about what teenage boys got up to when their parents weren't around.

"What are you and Mom doing for Valentine's Day?" Whitney asked, helping herself to another taco, apparently having tormented her father enough for the moment.

The two were eating at one of the newly-opened restaurants on Capitol Road, a tradition that Mike began at his therapist recommendation. For the past three months he had spent every Tuesday night with Whitney and every Thursday with Shaylyn. It was a practice that Mike wished he had instituted years ago, finding both girls were far more likely to open up when they weren't talking over each other. It made him wonder whether Lucas would have come out of his shell more if he wasn't always competing with older sisters for his parents' time and attention. The thought caused a familiar ache, and Mike took a quick swig of his beer to hide the sudden rush of emotion.

"Dad?"

"What honey?" Mike asked, realizing that he must have been something important.

"Valentine's Day?" Whitney asked. "I asked what you were doing for Mom."

Mike shrugged. He and Christine never really celebrated Valentine's Day. Thinking back, Mike vaguely recalled bringing her a box of chocolates home two years ago when he was home between deployments, before the Nathan James left for the Arctic, but actually going out? That would have been, well, about sixteen years ago when Christine was still pregnant with Whitney and there was no need to worry about finding a babysitter on the most popular night of the year. "Probably make a pizza and watch a movie."

"Seriously Dad?" Whitney demanded. She set down her taco and gave him an exasperated look. "You and Mom _just_ got back together. Aren't you supposed to be acting like newlyweds again? You're certainly acting all gross and kissy."

Mike grinned at Whitney's discomfort, a tiny bit of payback for her earlier teasing. "You know that your mom doesn't really like going out here."

And it was true. Christine found the constant attention and recognition – her face was highly publicized following the rescue and then again once information Christine provided led to the recovery of another group of hostages being held in rural Texas – uncomfortable.

Whitney pouted for a minute. "I know! You should do something really romantic like sing her a song. I could help you write it!"

Mike laughed. "There is zero chance of that happening."

"Well then you think of something. But you have to make it special, something that she'll remember." Whitney's eyes grew distant and Mike knew she was imagining her own Valentine's Day, a thought that made him want to lose his dinner.

"We could always come chaperone your dance," Mike commented. "In fact, I bet your mom would find that really romantic. It would kind of be like a military ball."

But Whitney wasn't so easily fooled. She rolled her eyes. "As if you would subject yourself to three hours of teenage girls screaming over the Severed Monkeys."

 _Whitney 1, Mike 0._

There was no way Mike was going to willingly subject himself to three hours of the Severed Monkeys ( _what the hell kind of name was that anyway?_ ), a post-apocalyptic boy band who had taken the nation by storm but seemed to do very little singing. Instead their skill-sets involved kissing hands, growing three strands of hair on their chins and calling it a beard, screeching into microphones, and breaking teenage hearts. The idea of listening to them for an extended period of time made Mike seriously contemplate paying Granderson to accidentally take down the power grid.

"Don't you worry. I have it covered." Mike turned his attention back to his burrito. "Now, tell me about this problem you are having in chemistry."

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"McMahon," Mike pressed the intercom button on his phone, "could you please come in here?"

Two minutes later, Mike's assistant extraordinaire was standing before his desk, pen in hand. Mike waved her to a seat.

"I need reservations somewhere for Valentine's Day." Mike said bluntly, knowing how absurd of a request it was given that it was currently the ninth of February and the few restaurants in St. Louis were often booked solid on a regular night. Despite President Howard's efforts to revitalize the country, food shortages remained a problem, driving up the cost of running a restaurant, an industry where the margin lines were generally thin even before the economy tanked.

A chuckled sounded in the doorway. "Did you really forget about Valentine's Day?"

Mike scowled at Tom. "Maybe I left it a little late. What great plans do you have?"

"Dinner reservations at that Italian place followed by second row seats at the reopened opera house at nine," Tom replied, his tone smug.

Mike's eyebrows lifted. "Want to split it? You can keep the reservations, I'll just take the opera tickets."

Tom smirked as he dropped into the seat next to McMahon. "Not a chance, I already told Sasha what we're doing so she could pick out a dress."

"My understanding is that the Opera sold out immediately, sir, but there is a private showing of Gone with the Wind being held at the White House. I am certain that President Howard would allow you to join them," McMahon interposed.

"Good idea, McMahon, but Christine hates going to things at the White House. She claims I always end up working." Christine also hated Gone with the Wind, but no reason to rain on McMahon's parade any more than necessary. "Can you hit up some restaurants?"

"I'll see what I can find, sir." But McMahon, who had never failed at a single one of the impossible tasks that Mike set gave her, didn't sound optimistic.

"What about a babysitter?" Tom asked. "Aren't the girls going to the dance? Ashley's been talking about it for weeks."

"Kara owes me one for bailing her out last month while Debbie was out of town and Danny was in California," Mike replied, feeling rather pleased with himself for figuring out a solution to that problem.

Tom's eyebrow rose. "You mean the mission that you sent Green on with two hours' notice when you knew Kara had a conference with President Howard and the European Union representatives that couldn't be rescheduled?"

Okay, so perhaps he was somewhat responsible for that situation. "So?"

Tom shrugged. "No weight off my back. Just be ready to deal with Green. Danny pulled out all the stops to get them a room at the Hyatt for the evening. He's been talking for weeks about the benefits of room service, Jacuzzis, and having an entire night alone with his wife."

Mike weighed dealing with a grumpy Green versus pissing off Christine for a minute before a third option occurred to him. "Who's watching Frankie?"

"Debbie."

Smiling, Mike reached for the phone, dialing a number he knew by heart. "Ah Deborah, Kaito's favorite babysitter, how are you doing this fine evening?"

Debbie laughed, immediately intuiting the purpose of his call. "Yes, I can babysit and no, I can't help you get a reservation. Peter is booked solid for the entire night. Now go figure out somewhere that you can take that wife of yours before she finds out that you left all of this until far too late."

As he hung up the phone, Mike turned to Tom. "How much do you want to bet that McMahon gets me in anyway?"

"You're on."

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Mike straightened his tie as he walked up to his own front door. Debbie was the one to suggest that he get dressed at her place when he brought Kaito over, giving Christine uninterrupted time to get ready. He felt strangely nervous as he opened the door, and walked inside, calling for his wife.

Shaylyn popped her head out of the kitchen door, only for her eyes to grow wide. "You're wearing a suit Dad!"

Mike tugged on the double breast grey pinstripe suit that McMahon had located for him – not an easy task given Mike's height. From the slightly smug smile Kara was sporting when she dropped Frankie off, Mike had a feeling that McMahon might have required some assistance with her search. After all, Kara did have the benefit of knowing a large number of rather physically fit men. Mike smiled at his youngest daughter. "I thought it might be nice for a change."

That, and wearing the suit tonight was a way to distance himself from the military. Christine's resentment towards the Navy was something that they continued to work through in their counseling sessions and, although Mike suspected that it was an issue that would never truly be resolved, at least it was now out in the open. It didn't hurt that spending by year and a half with no idea of where she and the girls were or what they were doing had given him a much better appreciation for what his wife went through every time he shipped out. Getting both of their minds off his job for an evening was well worth the pain of wearing a tie.

"Do you want me to take that?" Shaylyn asked, indicating the bags that Mike was holding. He gave a short whistle as Shaylyn stepped out from the kitchen.

"You look beautiful, honey," Mike said, his voice a touch husky as he took in her red lace dress, a thick sash tied in the back, and slight heels. Even her hair looked different, older, as it curled around her shoulders.

Shaylyn flushed as she grabbed his bags, setting things out on the table. "Uncle Tom is coming by to pick me up in a few minutes. You missed Whitney but Mom took pictures."

Mike had a feeling that Whitney's early departure was intentional. If Mike wasn't here, he couldn't terrorize her date. Although he could get the boy's father fired, something he casually mentioned last time he saw Jasper. A honk sounded from the front of the house. "That sounds like them. Have fun!"

Waving to Sasha, who was driving the Chandler family's SUV, Mike turned to find Christine had managed to sneak up on him.

"Looks like we are child-free for the evening," Christine murmured as she reached forward to smooth down his tie. "It's been a while since I saw you in civvies."

Mike stared at his wife, her black cocktail dress falling in gentle waves to just below her knees, a matching silk wrap around her shoulders. He leaned forward to kiss her, careful not to smudge the makeup he knew would have taken her ages. "You look ravishing."

Christine giggled before swatting away his hand. "Now, where are we going? You said to dress up."

"Right this way." Grabbing Christine's arm, Mike steered her towards the kitchen, Christine's eyes widen as she took in the velvet tablecloth, gold place settings (where McMahon found these things was beyond him), two dozen red roses, and a bucket of champagne. With a flourish, Mike lit the candles and then pulled out one of the chairs for Christine to sit. "Welcome to Chez Slattery."

Christine waited until he rounded the table to take his own chair. "This looks amazing, Mike."

Mike lifted the lid off the spaghetti squash. It wasn't what he would have chosen, but given that Peter had relaxed his rule about no take-out solely for Mike and Christine, he wasn't complaining. Besides, Christine liked that sort of thing. "It's from Marseille."

"I didn't know Peter did take-out."

"He doesn't," Mike replied. "He made an exception for us."

Christine paused in the middle of helping herself to a mushroom puff thing that Mike didn't know the name of. "You forgot to make reservations, didn't you?"

"Pretty much." Mike shrugged. "But isn't this better anyway? No crowds, no noise. Just the two of us…."

Christine's lips twitched. "I'll let you know when the evening is over."

Four hours, one fantastic meal, two bottles of champagne, and half of an unbelievably ridiculous chick flick later, Mike watched as Christine hung up their crumbled clothing and slipped into her pajamas. While she brushed her teeth, he resumed the movie, knowing that neither of them would be able to sleep until Whitney got home. A minute later Christine was back, pressing a soft kiss against his cheek as she crawled into bed.

"Best Valentine's Day ever."


End file.
